Translate

Sunday, October 28, 2018

In 2010, Dr. Mark Haub, a Professor of Human Nutrition at Kansas State University, tried to show his students that pure caloric intake is the only thing that mattered for weight loss. So for ten weeks Dr. Haub only ate sugary convenience store snacks like Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Nutty Bars, and Powdered Donuts, but he limited his daily caloric intake to just 1800 calories a day. The results, you guessed it, he actually lost 27 pounds, his Body Mass Index (BMI) dropped from 29 to 25, his bad cholesterol (LDL) dropped 20 percent, his good cholesterol (HDL) increased 20 percent, and his triglycerides (fat in the blood) decreased 39 percent! Those are jaw-dropping results.

However, Jackson Blatner, a Dietitian and Spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association (ADA), does not recommend The Twinkie Diet. She said, "It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count...[But] there are things we can't measure...How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can't measure how diet changes affect our health." And of course, if you have diabetes, eating too much sugar like in The Twinkie Diet can't be good for your blood sugar not to mention the lack of nutrition. Even Dr. Haub knew The Twinkie Diet wasn't nutritious so he supplemented his diet with a multivitamin, a protein shake, and salad.

The whole point of The Twinking Diet was to show that only the number of calories counted in weight loss (calories in minus calories out). If you have a caloric deficit (regardless of what you eat), you'll lose weight and vice versa. In much the same way in business, only the margin counts in profitability (revenue in minus expenses out). If you have a revenue deficit, you'll lose money and vice versa.

In much the same way that eating just Twinkies
helped Dr. Haub drop 27 pounds and the other health improvements he documented, those
management quick fixes can show impressive short-term results. But the ADA's concerns about the increased long-term health risks parallels the long-term risks
from short-term management decisions.

One clear and obvious example might be cutting
employees during a business downturn. Over the last 20 years, layoffs seem to have
become the “immediate action” response to any economic slow down. Just like the
Twinkie Diet, the idea of cutting expenditures tastes good and shows a real, and
immediate change. But just like the Twinkie Diet the long-term effects can be
unclear and unhealthy. Layoffs have to be carefully crafted or you can
decimate your workforce and devastate morale.

Some companies do an across the board percentage
cut. Every department has to cut some arbitrary percentage of employees. While
you might be able to cut 3% of the purchasing department since you are buying
fewer raw materials, can you really cut 3% of your maintenance staff without
risking the future expense of replacing worn out equipment or facilities?
Obviously some businesses could idle equipment with little risk of damage and
others would have to carefully craft a storage plan.

With many businesses there are subtleties that
take an employee time to learn. This is called "institutional knowledge." One example might be in the building trades.
Contractors not only need to know how to build a home, they also need to know
the ins and outs of the local building codes. Yes, there is a model “International
Building Code” but each jurisdiction can implement those ideals differently and
not knowing those differences can cause expensive rework to satisfy building
inspectors. The point, of course being, that some employees have institutional knowledge that would take time and cost money to recreate.

Maintenance seems to be another place that looks
like an easy cut. If a machine is idle, we don’t need to keep monitoring its
status so we can cut maintenance staff. Anybody who has left their bicycle out
in the yard for the winter should understand that equipment needs to be
preserved when its not in use. That idle equipment can rust, lubricants can dry
out and gum up the machinery so it needs to be “exercised” by running every few
days or weeks. Someone has to do those checks and cycle the machines.

In every single case, layoffs lose some capacity
and when the crisis ends and production goes back up. Recreating the institutional knowledge of veteran employees and bringing the machines back on line can often end up costing
more than keeping the existing people on staff.

And here's a thought, rather than cull your workforce, start by cutting salaries across the board especially among high-paid executives and managers. Sure everyone from the CEO to the lowest paid employee will make less, but you'll preserve your institutional knowledge base.

Of course you don’t get the immediate wonderful
taste of doing something, and often the investors (who by the way usually have
a completely different goal than management) can’t can’t see any dramatic
changes that will impress them with your creative management. But maybe, just maybe, the real place to cut is the
junk food. No more candy, no more prepared foods, start buying fresh produce
and taking the time to cook it yourself.

What might the management equivalents be? How
about cutting costs by making your own parts rather than buying your parts from another source? This is called insourcing as opposed to outsourcing. Then the
parts manufacture profit margin stays on your books. Some might think they
can’t do that because the investors won’t see the dramatic change.

Downturns don’t happen in a vacuum. Usually there
are warning signs and good management works hard at staying ahead of that
curve. If you were “eating healthy” all along, you would havebeen looking for these saving long before the
downturn hit and you would be ready to cut in the savings. You already know you
are a labor-intensive business that requires trained workers so you have a
plan ready to preserve that capacity in the face of a slowdown.

Follow by Email

Subscribe To

Search This Blog

About Me

Because we are all tempted to sacrifice our souls for profit, power, position, prestige, privilege, promotions, popularity, pride, prejudice, politics, prosperity, possessions, or pleasures. So by changing our paradigms, we can become the best versions of ourselves and help make our world a better place to live.

In this blog, we highlight bad practices using examples from current and past events, then we show what the better choices are. This is not to show that good always triumphs over evil, but only to show that better exists and that it's possible for people to operate in the better way. The history of business and how we grew to where we are gives us a perspective that things have been just as bad in the past and eventually got better, so there's still hope that things will cycle to the “better” yet again. We believe this blog is part of pushing the rope of improvement up the hill of progress. If you are dissatisfied with the status quo and looking for a better way to live and work, then bookmark our blog and follow us by email.

________________

BRYAN J. NEVA, SR. is a writer and electronics engineer from San Diego, California. He served as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy during the Cold War and early War on Terror. He subsequently earned a BSEE and MBA degree from Old Dominion University, and then went on to work in the defense, medical device, and aerospace industries. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Bryan is a strong proponent of Catholic Social Justice and Economic teachings akin to conscientious capitalism and responsible, servant leadership. From his diverse background, he has a counterintuitive view of business management that values people over profits and the needs of the many over the wants of the few.

________________

ALLEN F. LAUDENSLAGER, JR. is a semi-retired writer from Seattle with a business and management background spanning over fifty years. After serving in the Army in Vietnam, he went on to work as an assembly line worker, a foreman, an electrician, a cabinetmaker, a small business owner, an electronics technician, a supervisor, a manager, a senior project manager, and a technical writer. With the knowledge and experience he has gained over a lifetime, he brings an insightful view of life, business, and management in today's global markets.